Best wearables of CES 2015

At CES 2015, wearable technology is go! Our Wareable operatives are out in Vegas buzzing the stands, patrolling the product launches and clocking up some serious figures on their fitness trackers at the same time.

If it’s about the connected self - a smartwatch, fitness tracker, VR hardware or the most sublime of smart home style - then we’ll have it on our CES 2015 homepage. All the same, if you’re pushed for time, then right here is our look at the best wearables at CES 2015. Enjoy.

Withings Activité Pop

The Withings Activité was one of the very best wearables of 2014. We love it. Go and read our review if you don’t believe us. The only thing wrong with it is the £320 price tag. So, it’s something of a late Christmas surprise to find the French company launching the same device made from cheaper, and only marginally less attractive, materials.

It’s all about PVD-coated metals in a trio of tasty colours, an 8-month battery life and, most importantly of all, a price of less than half the original at just £119.95. The limited release is planned for March. Don’t miss out.

Avegant Glyph

We’d seen it, loved it and backed it as a Kickstarter campaign but, now on show at CES 2015 - and with a confirmed launch date to boot - the Avegant Glyph has become a virtual reality. See what we did there?

This HMD projects the display onto your retinas, unlike the Oculus Rift and pals, at a very decent 720p per eye resolution. It’s main M.O. is as a personal theatre for your mobile-connected movie watching and, with this slightly lower-hanging fruit as the target, there’s a decent chance that it actually might work well too.

Up for pre-order now for $499 with delivery planned for autumn 2015.

LookSee

Another pretty piece for the wrist makes our best of CES list; this is the LookSee bracelet. It Bluetooths up to your iPhone and that attractive, and entirely customisable, E Ink display will write out text messages, caller IDs, boarding passes and even your photos too.

Thanks to that low-power screen tech, you get a stonking one-year battery life before you need to plug it in again. Let’s just hope you remember where you put the charger.

There’s a library of patterns and photos to choose as your LookSee wallpaper to keep the fashion-appeal of this wearable fresh. Let’s just hope it’s affordable when it finally turns up.

Misfit Swarovski Shine

There was a terrible phase about seven years ago in technology when when gadget-makers daubed their devices in Swarovski crystals and added about three zeros to the price as a way of making up for innovation. We’d like to say that we’re sorry that that trend has come back but, damn, the Misfit Swarovski Shine looks really good.

Whether worn as a pendant, a bracelet or part of some kind of connected self vajazzle, it still performs all the clever activity and sleep tracking tricks of the standard Shine, only it now comes with solar charging too if you go with the purple version. Go with the purple version.

Garmin Fenix 3

From the sublime to the sporty; it’s not that there’s anything amazingly ground-breaking about the Garmin Fenix 3. It’s one of the best wearables at CES 2015 because it’s part of a series of multi-sports super watches that’s already way out in front of the pack.

This next edition of this track-running, trail-finding, hiking, mountaineering, skiing, snowboarding, swimming, and indoor work-out Megaladon has just gone technicolour with an LCD screen designed for daylight. There’s also connected apps to go with it to make it more useful than ever. Yours for the buying in the first quarter of this year.

Misfit Bolt

Yep, that’s right. We’re back with Misfit again. This time, it’s the other major project that Sonny Vu and his people have announced at CES 2015. The Misfit Bolt is a connected light bulb which marries the colour temp and intensity controls of the well-established Philips Hue brand with the intelligent sleep tracking and smart waking skills of the Withings Aura.

You’ll be able to sit there on your phone and hit the mood just right as well as get woken up gently without having to lift a finger. As it goes, we’re not entirely convinced that smart alarms are a good idea. The real reason that Bolt makes the list is that you can pick one up for just $49 when it comes in February. Very reasonable.

Sony Smart B-Trainer

It’s a real toss-up as to whether the Sony Smart B-Trainer or Parrot Zik Sport will be the better ear-worn run tracker, but we’re opting for the former. Why? Well, both measure all those useful things like heart rate, distance, time and calories but it’s the real-time audio coaching advice and the auto-selection of appropriate music to your bpm that we like best.

There aren’t so many spec details to hang onto but the B-Trainer is much in the same design is the Bluetooth Walkman of old. The good news this time, however, is that you don’t need to go running with your mobile in your pocket for it to work. Take a closer look here for the details.

Guess Connect

The only designer watch company to have thrown its wearable offerings onto the CES barbecue has been Guess. We were expecting news from TAG Heuer but it’s the American fashion brand that made it instead.

The Guess Connect is a smartwatch powered by Martian and it follows the same subtle approach to wearables with only a small section of the display devoted to your notifications. What we’ve always liked about Martian is the customisable vibration patterns so that you know exactly who and what is trying to get hold of you without even having to look.

If you’re into the Guess style, then the good news is that the Connect is design to be fully upgradegable with new features, sensors and the like as things move on.

LG Audi smartwatch

There’s not an awful lot we know about this watch which was casually flashed at the Audi press conference when the company chairman used it to remote control its driverless Prologue car onto the stage. It looks a lot like a seriously souped-up version of the LG G Watch R only with shiny stainless steel and leather where there are normally more sedate materials.

The only facts around the device are that it runs WebOS instead of Android Wear with some kind of custom UI and it is due to launch in 2016. Even so, it’s become one of the most talked about wearables at the show. What do you think?

The show isn't over yet so we'll be adding the finest wearable tech and connected self gadgets to this esteemed list before the week is out.